Event planner Rebecca Miller, at Bluxome Street Winery in S.F., is the owner of MartiniBird, whose clients include Uber and the tech website the Information. She has also planned birthday parties on remote islands and had ice trucked in for holiday fetes.

Rebecca Miller comes from a family of entrepreneurs and iconoclasts, so when it came time to make a name for herself, it made sense that she would strike an individualist note, too.

Her forebears created Folgers Coffee, PG&E and the Sonoma Land Trust. Her father, a seventh-generation San Franciscan, moved to Montana, where he created a fly-fishing company, and her mother, a social worker, ran twice for statewide office. A great-aunt created a stir by leaving San Francisco high society to become a Carmelite nun.

Each of those endeavors contained an element of serving the public, so when Miller graduated from the University of San Francisco, her career goal centered on the idea of "helping people," she said.

She worked for the Commonwealth Club, a public affairs group, and Samasource, a social enterprise that outsources database tasks to Third World countries, before rising to marketing director at Trinity Ventures in Menlo Park. But during her four years at the venture capital firm, she found she had a knack for helping people another way: planning parties and events.

Quietly, she had begun planning parties for friends, on the side, for free. Her big gig was the launch of Uber cabs in Los Angeles, for which she was asked to create a spectacular and strategic launch. The dinner for 200 included Hollywood celebs and investors, was held in a garage called Smoggeshoppe, and featured Uber cars on display, Uber Side Car cocktails and tables set with toy Matchbox cars spray-painted black to look like Uber cars. Walls were lined with black bookshelves, laden with vintage books, flowers and framed black-and-white pictures of Uber riders and drivers, for a personal touch.

With several years of pro bono work under her hat, she started a new (and paying) career. Miller calls her one-woman enterprise MartiniBird, after a Dr. Seuss artwork of a bird with a cocktail in one hand and a toy in another.

Drawing on her circle of friends and acquaintances, and word of mouth, her client list includes the high society set of today's world: the young tech set, including the nonprofit Fwd.us, Mark Zuckerberg's immigration-reform group; Jessica Lessin, founder of the paywalled tech website the Information; and billionaire investor Shervin Pishevar of Sherpa Global.

Miller's work has taken her to remote islands to stage elaborate birthday parties, and called for her to dump tons of crushed ice onto her clients' front yards to double as snow for holiday fetes. But marketing-minded Miller doesn't focus solely on flourishes (sourcing wares from high-end vendors such as Sue Fisher King home furnishings, Michael Daigian flowers and Ladies Who Lunch catering), but on her clients' objectives, too.

For Lessin's website launch, Miller made playful note cards printed with iconic figures from history, literature or TV who had missed out on key information that led to them being left in the lurch or in trouble.

"It was part of our way of illustrating the kind of role we want to play, being a must-read, an indispensable resource," said Lessin, "and the note cards were conversation starters" for guests.

Working solo at the moment, Miller, 27, draws on her generation's fondness for apps and on-demand services to get the job done.

Only 20 minutes before a recent VIP dinner hosted by Pishevar for the screening of "Chef," a comedy film by his friend Jon Favreau, Miller received a text message saying that a large number of new guests would be joining the group.

Instead of crumbling under pressure, she turned to TaskRabbit, an errand service, ordered the pickup of extra filet mignon from a shop at the Ferry Building and had it delivered to the chef at the private event, just in time for dinner.

"She's calm under pressure, and no matter how logistically challenging something is, she is calm and has it under control," Pishevar said. "That gives people a lot of joy and happiness, to work with someone who is that professional and amazing."

MILLER'S TOP PARTY TIPS

-- Invitations set the tone and the event's objective for guests, so think about the big picture when designing them, especially for corporate events. An invitation prepared with Butchershop Creative for a Rat Pack party featured images of Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, which told guests they were in for a "classy, sexy, cool evening," Miller said. (The invite won a 2014 Hermes Design Award, she said.)

-- Let your fingers do the walking and talking. Miller uses apps at her fingertips, such as TaskRabbit and Postmates for running errands and delivering food or other items from local stores, and shared Google docs to collaborate with clients, contractors and vendors.

-- Use products that give a high-end touch at low-cost prices. A Miller favorite is MyDrap, thin cloth napkins that come on a roll, like paper towels. Easy to tear off, they're available in 20 colors and four sizes, are biodegradable and sold at Hudson Grace in San Francisco and www.buymydrap.com.